Getting to Know You Series: Meet Emma Vadehra of Next100
Editor’s Note: We’re back with a new installment in our occasional Getting to Know You series, where we introduce you to our grantee partners, network members, and philanthropy colleagues who have interesting stories to tell. Today we’re chatting with Emma Vadehra, Executive Director of Next100.
Elisabeth Rapport (ER): Tell me a bit about your professional background, prior to you launching Next100 with your Century Foundation colleagues.
Emma Vadehra (EV): I’ve spent the bulk of my career focused on building a fairer, more equitable education system. As a former congressional staffer and later chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Education in the Obama administration, I saw firsthand the tremendous power of government and the public policies that emanate from government; as well as the behind the scenes power of a select few in D.C. (often well-intentioned, purpose-driven public servants) to profoundly impact the lives of millions of people. But I also witnessed the ways in which who holds these roles, and who sits at these decision-making tables—which backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives were represented, and, more importantly, which were excluded—greatly influenced how policy was developed and implemented, and who it stood to benefit. It became clear to me that to improve the what of policy, we needed to change the who and how: who is making policy and how it is being made—namely, by bringing to the table people who are closest to the problems we are trying to solve. Policy by those for the most at stake, for those with the most at stake.
After leaving government, I worked with education nonprofits that were taking meaningful steps to both diversify and develop their workforces. I saw how important it is to invest in talent and in people in a meaningful way: in outreach and recruitment, to seek out talent from untapped and overlooked communities, and to intentionally and consistently develop the skills of staff to allow those to thrive who don’t walk in with the experience or language but bring other skills and experiences. How, if we want to build organizations that are both inclusive and effective, efforts to recruit and develop diverse talent must be at the core of an organization’s work. So these lessons of what wasn’t working, and what might, when trying to open new pathways to new people, combined with my experience in government and belief in broadening the policymaking tent, led me to Next100.
ER: Next100 is a relatively new startup think tank experimenting with the whole model of think tanks as we know them. Why was two years ago the right time to reimagine how we approach policy, namely that policy should be by and for those with most at stake?
EV: Well here, I have to give credit to The Century Foundation (TCF), a progressive think tank that has a long history of supporting emerging, creative thinkers and championing innovative approaches to policy. In 2018, when TCF was turning 100 years old, they came up with the idea of investing in a different kind of think tank for a new generation of progressive leaders; they were open to what this could look like, and supported the vision of Next100. Remember, 2018 was a period of tremendous civic energy and activism, with young people across the country rising up to support movements from climate action to gun safety, along with a midterm election that ushered in the most diverse Congress in history.
At that time, while there was a lot of new energy and engagement of young people and people of color, so much of this was being directed toward activism and organizing, even running for office — but there were too few opportunities for the next generation to go directly into developing and implementing a public policy agenda. So we decided to try to help fill that gap, and give emerging leaders the opportunity and space and independence to develop their own agenda with communities, not work off someone else’s script, or serve as someone else’s apprentice. We wanted to build something that trusted a new generation and new leaders to create their own agendas for change, with their communities.
ER: Take a deeper dive with me on how this concept of reimagining policy is taking shape in the real world. What elements of your work are you most excited about?
EV: For me, the work and creativity of the PEs themselves is what’s most exciting about Next100. We set out to create an organization that didn’t really exist before; there was no roadmap for what we were trying to do. We had a novel idea and a set of beliefs (that people closest to policy problems should and can be driving policy solutions) but, as with any startup or new experiment, there were a lot of unknowns about how it would work, if we’d ultimately have impact. What the PEs have been able to accomplish over the last few years has put those questions to bed.
What has this looked like in practice? For one, it means that PEs have brought fresh thinking to old debates, often informed by their own lived experience. One of our inaugural PEs, Isabel Coronado, a citizen of the Mvskoke (Creek) Nation, drew on her personal experience growing up with an incarcerated mother to reframe criminal justice as a family issue. Nearly three million children in the United States have an incarcerated parent, many of them Native, Black, and Latinx children. By focusing on the promise and potential of children of incarcerated parents, Isabel’s work has strengthened sentencing reform efforts that prioritize keeping families together, as well as promoted comprehensive solutions to better support kids and families through the criminal justice system.
For another PE, Zaki Smith, it’s meant eschewing traditional think tank white papers and instead erecting public art murals across Brooklyn to educate and engage impacted communities on the collateral consequences of having a criminal record, something he has experienced. These efforts have gone hand-in-hand with Zaki’s state-level advocacy work to build support for legislation in New York that would automatically expunge the criminal records after individuals have repaid their debt to society.
ER: Clearly the past year-plus has deeply impacted what all of us do and how we do it. How have the pandemic and America's reckoning with racial injustice affected your approach and goals?
EV: I’d point to two things, both of which underscore the importance of our work and the need for more organizations like Next100. First, as part of our country’s reckoning with racial injustice, there has been a renewed and growing appreciation of the systemic forces that contribute to inequality and injustice. People—from elected officials at the highest levels to everyday people—are now talking about the systemic, structural barriers that hold communities down and, more importantly, the systemic, public policy solutions needed to overcome those barriers. We’re seeing a new interest in systemic, policy ideas to tackle issues that for too long have seemed insurmountable, from closing the racial wealth gap to dramatically reforming our criminal justice system. Next100 was built around the belief that systemic problems require systemic solutions; we just need to change who is driving them.
And that brings me to a second major outgrowth of the past year: the understanding that if we want to advance new and different approaches, we need new and different people at the table developing and driving those approaches. All types of organizations today are looking for ways to make their workplaces more diverse, representative, and inclusive—because doing so makes those organizations more effective. In the public policy world, that translates to better, more impactful policies. But we’ve got a long way to go in the policy community, and window-dressing isn’t enough. Too often, impacted individuals like Isabel and Zaki are brought in at the last minute and asked to simply share their story at a press conference, to put a face to an issue or cause. Their experience isn’t viewed as expertise. They are rarely asked what they and their community think the solution should be. Developments over the past year have highlighted the need to empower diverse voices and bring them into the policymaking process early, supporting them as they pursue the change that they want to see. And that’s been the Next100 model from the start.
ER: How can those in the funding community who have supported think tanks and policy work in their more traditional forms transform their giving to align with the fresher policy-by-and-for-the-stakeholders approach? What advice would you give to a funder looking to adapt and grow their support of this work?
EV: Funders who support policy research, development and advocacy—especially those committed to equity and inclusion—should start by looking at the type of policy organizations they typically fund and ask the question: who and which voices are represented within that organization, and who is left out? What backgrounds and experiences are represented by those on staff, and how are those represented in the organization’s priorities and work? What they’ll see is a policy community that one, doesn’t look anything like America demographic-wise, particularly in senior roles; and two, tends to value limited types of expertise and experience that gives priority to people with prestigious academic backgrounds and those who have spent time working in government. These backgrounds are valuable; but they are not the only backgrounds that we need at the policy table. Funders should recognize their role in maintaining a policy community that looks this way: by prioritizing support for traditional, elite, organizations and individuals, funders create incentives for the policy community to hire as they always have, sending the message that academic and government experience, not lived experience, equates with expertise.
To play their part in transforming the policy sector, policy funders need to be willing to change that up and invest in leadership development in the policy space: look for opportunities to support different types of people, with different types of experiences, who bring different ways of thinking to public policy work. Funders have to be willing to invest in people who may not have all the skills or connections on day one; but who if they are supported, can bring those skills and others to develop a stronger sector overall, with different forms of experience and expertise. They should recognize that growing new leaders, investing in talent development on a routine basis, is a core part of supporting a robust policy ecosystem. And that it’s no different from their work to develop emerging leaders in other areas of grant making.
This shift should be accompanied by another change: a willingness to provide reasonable autonomy around the substance of a policy agenda to grantees. Typically, funders look to support individuals and groups that are doing work that advances one or more of their own policy goals—an approach that says, “we want X to happen, who can we fund who is best positioned to make X happen.” Often, this precludes funding policy leaders who are working alongside their own communities to develop their own policy agendas, and providing them with time and space to develop and refine a community-centered agenda. As with leadership development, this too is an area where funders should be willing to consider the policy space as they might other spaces: as they support grassroots organizing efforts that are premised on the idea that it is community members, not grant makers, who know best what a specific community needs and how to effect change. Funders should be just as willing to support dynamic policy leaders and organizations that don’t have pre-determined solutions, or that are developing solutions that are different from a funder’s preexisting goals.